To be honest, building a computer inside of an aquarium filled with clear mineral oil, seems to be a great challenge and the guys at PugetSystems did it. They managed to submerge, first an old computer and then an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB of RAM (OCZ), with an NVIDIA 650i Ultra motherboard, a 8600 GT video card and a 74GB Western Digital Raptor hard drive.

They used an Eclypse System 6 Aquarium, Lian-Li motherboard tray, clear acrylic panel, silicon sealant, weather stripping, an air pump and bubble bar for the bubbles of course, and obviously 5-6 gallons of mineral oil.

This is just a fun model and Puget Systems won’t sell it. Here are more info if you want to build your own.

Remember the story about the “$100 laptop”? It seems the project doesn’t respect the initial plan anymore. The price tag has reach $200 now. Perhaps they should reconsider the campaign’s name in the $200 laptop. The actual reality is far from the Nicholas Negroponte’s projections.

After the laptop was priced at $150 in Februry, at $175 in April and $188 two weeks ago, it reached a new level. The XO laptops were put out for sale in lots of 10,000 for $200 a piece. The One Laptop per Child Foundation announced three countries involved in the project till now - Uruguay, Peru and Mongolia. Probably their credibility decreased in the last months, so the deals with other governments failed.

Currently the laptop features a keyboard that switches languages, a video camera, Wi-Fi and Linux software. Microsoft Corp. has agreed to release a compatible Windows XP version for the XO laptop, but we don’t know when it will be ready.

We are looking forward to receive good new about this project, as it could be a great way of increasing the learning skills in poor regions.

via Reuters